


Starting the Cold Fire Burning on the River

by esmethera



Category: Gravity Falls
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-14 20:17:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7188605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esmethera/pseuds/esmethera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU from "Not What He Seems"</p><p>The twins are facing down their last summer at home before they head off to college, but nothing goes as planned. Soon Dipper is seizing at what could be his last great adventure before he has to grow up and become boring like his dad. He will solve the mysteries, once and for all, of that tiny Oregon town and its' strange and terrifying demon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dipper: Back up North

**Epitaph on a Tyrant**  
W. H. Auden  
  
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,  
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;  
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,  
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;  
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,  
and when he cried the little children died in the streets.

 

 **Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came**  
Robert Browning  
  
My first thought was, he lied in every word,  
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye  
Askance to watch the working of his lie  
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford  
Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored  
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.

 

**Dipper: Back Up North**

Dipper woke up on the first Monday of summer vacation with puffy red eyes and a deep, burning need for a lot more sleep. His bed was a mess of books, loose pieces of paper, a couple of pens jabbing at his back, and one rumpled sheet twisted mostly around his feet. His phone’s alarm was still going loud and strong on his desk at the other end of the room, about the only place he could put it without hitting snooze ten times.

This morning was going to be the first in an entire summer of being a Mail Room Clerk at his dad’s law office. Whoopty. At least at the end of each week he was going to have a paycheck, though, unlike Mabel. Faintly, in between the very annoying BEEPs of his own phone, he could hear a pop song jangling away from said sister’s room. Once he got up, groaning and muttering the whole time, and shuffled to his phone to turn it off, he could more clearly hear the song. He heard it turn off a moment later. He got dressed with the pants and button up shirt his mother ironed the night before, and was uncomfortably sitting at his desk and deleting crap email when he heard her alarm go off again. A second later there was silence again. Dipper sighed and got up. He headed out of his room and stepped the one step across the narrow hall between their rooms to bang on her door. “Mabel, if I have to be awake, so should you!”

“Uuuugh,” her voice came through the door. “Dipper go awaaay.”

He made a face at her door and headed downstairs, leaving his computer running like usual. Fine, more breakfast for him.

The past winter and spring had treated him to an excellent growth spurt of a whopping five inches, leading to Dipper racking up a total of ten inches over his 5’ 3” sister. He still weighed maybe 120 pounds soaking wet, and tended to resemble a beanpole more than a guy nearing seventeen years of age. His parents made constant jokes about the grocery bill. The puffy vest and baggy jeans he usually wore hid a lot of the sharp poking bits of him, but today, in tailored pants and a shirt, he thought he looked like a walking skeleton. At least he had managed to get away with keeping his longer haircut. His father had tried to put his foot down, the swooping bangs covering his birthmark not being very “professional looking”. Dipper had said there was no way in HELL he was leaving the house with short hair and no hat. His mother had complained about his language, and his father had stared hard at him for a few moments, then relented.

“Honey,” his mother said when she saw him stand up straight from ducking into the kitchen, “come here, your hair’s a mess, did you even brush it?” She came over and started yanking it straight, then trying to press it down.

“Mooom,” he whined, and elbowed her hand away. He moved around her to slouch into his favorite tall chair at the kitchen island.

She made tsk’ing noises at him, but walked around to the other side of the island where, below the bar he was resting both of his elbows on, the stovetop had a dirty griddle and next to it two plates stacked high with pancakes. She handed one over, then turned around and went to the sink to fill up a glass of water for him. He leaned over the bar and easily nabbed the syrup, pouring a small puddle on the top pancake then spreading it around with his fork. She set the water down for him, and while he thought it looked a little bit more bubbly than usual, he drank most of it down in one go.

He was done with his stack and had used his fork to steal two pancakes from the other plate when Mabel finally came downstairs, half her face sparkling with yellow glitter. Her new short pixie cut, most of it still brown but with healthy streaks dyed various shades of green and blue, was practically standing up straight. She was wearing the hospital scrubs mom had brought home for her, already covered in a healthy dose of glitter, paint, glue, and stickers.

“Oh baby,” their mother said, and sighed. She grabbed the plate of pancakes, paused ever so slightly and flicked her eyes to Dipper, but didn’t say anything. She set the plate in front of Mabel who had just slumped into the chair to Dipper’s left, just like every other school day morning. “Did you finish the thing you wanted to make for the kids?”

“Yeah!” Mabel said, and perked up, grabbed the syrup, dumped a whole ocean over them, so that some of the golden sticky stuff dripped onto the counter. “The Happy-mo-tron is COMPLETE!” She started digging into her pancakes with her usual gusto, only pausing to steal the last bit of water out of his glass. Mom sighed, rolled her eyes, re-filled his glass, and gave Mabel her own.

Mabel had started filling out quite a bit before Dipper hit any kind of growth spurt, a fact that he became painfully, horrifyingly aware of once the boys at school stopped beating him up and started trying to be friends so they could maybe “hang out at your place later”.  The scrubs she was wearing today were particularly ill fitting, pulling tightly against her stomach, chest, and thighs, and were cut in a pretty low V. Dipper despondently wondered how many interns would be “dropping by” to “consult” with Dr. Meredith Pines over the summer.

“Ok, well, eat up, you and I need to leave in a half hour or so. Dipper, your father will be down shortly, and after he eats his toast he’s going to want to be out the door right away, so be ready.”

He nodded, and pulled his phone out of his pocket, opening a news app and refreshing. The headline at the top caught his attention immediately. He let his hand fall and bang against the counter. His jaw dropped. “Mo- mom…”

“Hmm?” Mom was digging around in her purse and didn’t look up. His throat felt clogged, and only a strangled noise escaped.

“What it is bro bro?” Mabel asked, frowning.

He still couldn’t find his voice. He could only stare at the screen and hope it was all the worst fucking joke in history.

Mabel leaned over and pressed against his arm to get a look at his screen. “Oh holy shit-!”

Mom immediately dropped what she had fished out of her purse and came around Dipper’s other side to see what they were looking at while saying “Mabel, language! You can’t say things like that around the patients- What the FUCK!”

“Merry! I have to leave NOW, the firm called and-” dad said as he came running into the kitchen, but he was cut off by mom, who had ripped Dipper’s phone out of his hand and shoving it in his dad’s face.

“Aren’t they covered by YOUR firm? What is the MEANING of this Stan? What…”

His mother’s shrill voice fell into the background as Mabel rested her head in Dipper’s shoulder and started crying.

The headline had read “DOZENS DEAD, MANY MORE HOSPITALIZED; NEW PIEDMONT FRACKING SITE SUSPECTED”.

“That's down near where a bunch of my friends live,” Mabel sniffled, her voice thick. "Do you think they're ok?"

“I have no idea,” he admitted.

“That’s it,” their mother’s voice said, so piercing it dragged their attention back to their parent’s conversation-slash-argument. “They’re not staying here, I-”

“Where could we SEND them Mered-”

“I DON’T CARE! Anywhere but HERE Stanly!”

Dipper’s head whipped up. He would seize this incredibly tiny silver lining on the worst shitstorm he’d ever seen. “We can go to Gravity Falls!” he said.

“NO!” They both turned and yelled at him, then turned back to one another.

“Mom, you LITERALLY just said ANYWHERE was better than here!”

Their parents both looked at him again. His father was completely red in the face and the blood vessel at the side of his forehead was visibly pounding. His mother had some tears she was roughly wiping at. They both glared.

“Dipper, there would be no family supervision there. Without your Great Uncle-”

A mental vision of their last summer there, several years ago, and it’s brutal, explosive, fiery ending, flashed before Dipper’s eyes, and he balled his fists up into his lap and stared down at them.

She faltered for a moment, then pressed on, “without anyone there to watch over you we would worry, dear. We can send you to your nana’s in Florida or to my sister’s in DC or any other number of-”

“Why do we need to leave, anyway?” Mabel interrupted. “Aren’t, like, all hands going to be needed on deck, here? Can’t we help? I was going to be helping at the hospital anyway! I WANT to help, mom!”

“If I’m not going to be an office drone, I’m going to Gravity Falls,” Dipper said, and looked up to stare his father down.

His father’s face lost a lot of the red, and he looked down at Dipper with the Disapproving Dad face. “If you’re so lacking in ambition, son, then fine. Go.”

“But Stan-!” His mother yelled.

“The caretaker’s there, and they’re going off to college in a couple of months, Merry. You can’t coddle them like little kids anymore.”

Mom’s face was pale and tears were pouring down her face now unchecked.

Dad pulled Mom into a tight hug, glared fiercely at Dipper over his mother’s shoulder, and petted her hair as she whispered, "Stan, what if something happens..." while he said softly,  “They’ll be careful.” Dipper nodded frantically. Careful, they’d be SUPER careful. “They’ll be safer there than here, hun. It’ll be ok. Shh, it’ll be fine…”

“Let’s go pack,” Dipper said under his breath.

Mabel said “Wha- oh, yeah, ok.” She looked like she was about to be sick, but didn’t argue, just followed him up the stairs.


	2. Mabel: The Long Road Back

Mabel’s brother owned the shittiest car in existence. He saved for, like, two whole years for it, too. When he turned 16 and a half and finally got his license he still only had enough to buy something like Alfred off Craigslist from some creepy looking dude. Alfred was a 1997 Honda Accord Wagon that had so many miles on it their dad nearly had a heart attack when he heard the number. The creepshow had been asking for $3,000, but Dipper showed up with cash and said $2,450 or nothing, and the guy took it, no questions asked. The cash had been his entire savings, and so it had clearly been painful to hand over, but he kept going on and on about how it was “clearly, entirely worth it”. It definitely had come in handy already a couple of times carting her art crap around to a couple of student art shows she had entered. Once his savings was depleted he didn’t really have the gas money to go much of anywhere, so it mostly had been sitting at the back of the three car parking lot behind their parent’s house, except when Mabel gave him $10 in exchange for a ride.

They both sat in Alfred now, the back of the wagon stuffed completely full of piles of bolts of fabric, spools and spools of thread, plastic shopping bags with ribbon spilling out, many tubes of glitter, four massive tins of buttons and googly eyes, two sewing machines, a large, multi-colored pile of yarn scattered throughout in previously empty nooks and crannies, three bulging laundry hampers filled with sweaters and other clothes, and then, in the footwell behind Dipper, a small, still somewhat flat backpack with a couple of changes of clothes and an old, red hardcover book, ratty with age.

Dipper looked in his rearview mirror and said, “really Mabel?”

“Shut up and drive,” she said, setting up her phone to play shitty pop on the aftermarket stereo aux in she had whined at Dipper to let her pay to have put in a month ago. She really didn’t understand why he’d fought against it so hard when he wasn’t paying. She opened her mouth and began singing along at the top of her lungs.

He sighed and winced, but drive he did. He pulled out of the empty driveway, both of their parents having left for their respective workplaces while Mabel was still trying to decide how many different sizes of knitting needles she should bring (clearly the answer has been: all of them). They rolled down the windows; the t-shirt Dipper had changed into was already covered in sweat stains not twenty minutes later as they sat in traffic on I-80.

“I told you we should have gone out to I-680,” Mabel said. She had plugged the Mystery Shack’s address into her phone and it was occasionally turning down the music to fruitlessly aim them in a different direction as Dipper ignored both it and her and drove the way their parent’s always drove when they headed in that direction.

“But that’s more miles,” Dipper whined.

They crawled. Dipper sweated. Mabel sang along to her music and knitted away, resolutely not thinking about her abandoned project she had literally spent months on that now no one would ever get to see. She was also not thinking about all the people hurt or dead, and definitely not wondering if any of them where her friends. It was weird to sit in traffic, keep going like everything was normal, while many, many official-looking vehicles, some with lights and sirens going full force, sped by in the other direction. She wiped away at the moisture that built up at the corners of her eyes every once in a while, until finally they were out of the traffic and moving, and forgetting became easier as the road opened up and the sirens faded away.

Mabel had considered ignoring what Dipper wanted her to do the way he'd done to dad. This was Dipper's life adventure, not hers. But it took only one desperate twin look from him for her to abandon home and agree to go. Besides, if she weren't around he'd probably end up dead from a gnome or something. He definitely needed her there, and she would be there for her twin the way they were always there for each other.

Alfred reached its peak at a whopping 64 miles per hour as it chugged and juttered its way north. They really weren't even that far away from home when Dipper asked, out of the blue, "where do you want to stop for dinner?”

Mabel finished singing along with the chorus then replied, “all you ever think about is food.”

“Well, it does keep us alive, you know. Kind of necessary, and all that…”

Mabel sighed. “You want to go to that awful pit stop again, don’t you?”

Their very first bus to Grunkle Stan’s had made one stop on the way, to the most amazing and terrible gas station they had ever seen. It had at least ten different kinds of mold in the women’s room, a trucking museum, four greasy fast food places, and bunch of little shops including a psychic lady who had a bookcase filled with books for sale with titles like “Demon Hunting and You”, “déofol lífgesceafte”, and something that just looked like weird scribbles.  


Dipper had said that he agreed the place was incredibly disgusting, but she remembered the way he’d been staring at that bookshelf. “Um, what? No! Noo…. yes. Yes, come on Mabel, don't you remember all those books for sale?" Yup, there we go.  "Who knows what kind of useful information could be hidden away in that collection. And this time I’ll actually have money to buy some of them! Well, maybe like one of them. But still! Totally worth it.”

She rolled her eyes, but agreed.

That stop was just past the Oregon border, which was a long way off from where they were; it would end up probably being a later dinner than usual. In the meantime Dipper snacked on granola bar after granola bar and drained two water bottles. She saw the first pee/gas break coming from miles away (literally). They got back on the road fast, and she complained about why couldn’t’ve they just grabbed food while they were there and driven the rest of the way to Gravity Falls without stopping and eat dinner at the shack.

“We’d have to stop and get gas again, anyway!” Dipper said. Mabel grinned at the crack in his voice on that last word.

Finally the “OREGON Welcomes you!” sign showed up in the dry, scrubby landscape. It was maybe a half hour to the stop, so when Mabel finished the row she was on a few minutes later she packed the purple sweater away and just watched the heat mirages coming off the pavement.

It was still pretty bright outside when Dipper pulled off the highway into the pit stop a little before 7pm. The parking lot was huge, and the half at the other end was completely full of semis all lined up in the extra long, slightly slanted truck spots. The half of the lot with normal car-shaped spots had only one other car parked there. Directly across from their front row parking spot two huge double doors loomed with an enormous arch over it that read in an ugly, fading red “WELCOME TO OREGON’S LARGEST TRUCK MUSEUM”.

There were three cracked and crumbling steps up to the doors, and when she pulled on the handle she made a face at the slimy feel of it against her fingers. Once she was in and overwhelmed by the smell of mold and grease, she looked down at the grey smudge on her hand and said, “I’m going to the bathroom.”

“Yeah, ok,” her brother said, and walked off without even looking at her. He headed off around the food court, back to where the museum and the couple of little shops were, certainly making a beeline for that old bookcase of tourist crap. She rolled her eyes.She would have thought Dipper would have learned his lesson from all the stupid stuff Grunkle Stan had pulled on the tourists that had visited the shack. 

Oh well. She decided that she would take care of business, grab a bite for the road, and just wait for the dork out in the car so she could nab the driver’s seat and finally call dibs on her turn at the wheel.


	3. Dipper: And a Bag of Doritos

The smell, sight, and even feel of the air in that place really set off an intense desire to run screaming for a shower. He tried to make sure he didn’t get too close to anything, or breathe too deeply. Maybe he would just grab some junk food from the gas station rather than eat something from any of these places. He noticed that even Mabel wasn’t immune from the grossness of this place when she made a face at her hands, and he knew she had a pretty high threshold for gross.

He left her to her own devices and went straight for that psychic lady with her bookcase of old books. This involved some creative moves to not bump into any of the truckers in their dirt-stiff clothes waiting in line to order their dinner or leaving a register with food to find a seat in the cafeteria space. When he finally got around the food area and into the alcove with the small shops, he stopped dead. Where there once were neon lights and strands of hippie fabric curtaining off a dimly lit room, there was just a grate with a "closed" sign on it.

"Nooooo," Dipper moaned, and grabbed at his pine tree hat. "What-, why is this HAPPENING to me?"

"Hey sonny, calm down," a raised voice called out from across the alcove. Dipper turned to see a very old, stooped security guard coming toward him. "What seems to be the problem, young man?"

"There was- I wanted- What happened- Arg! I wanted to buy those books!" Dipper yelled and threw his hands up into the air.

"Now see here," the guard pointed in Dipper's face and wagged his finger. "You young hooligans need to keep your voices down. You're making a disturbance."

Dipper dropped his arms and slumped his shoulders. "Sorry, sir."

The old guard opened his mouth to say something else, and was still wagging his finger, when he let his arm drop. "Gonna 'sir' me, eh?" he said.

"Uh-" Dipper said, and his eyes darted left and right.  There were only two other shops still open, and neither of the shop keeps looked like they were paying attention. Between the closed psychic store and the open but currently empty barber shop there was a small door slightly ajar...

"Good kid! What a fine, young man. I never get no respect around here! But clearly some parents still know how to raise respectful kids."

Dipper stopped looking around, and stared at the guard for a moment. Then he pressed his lips together to try and keep from laughing. "Yes, sir."

The guard clapped him on the back. "I like your style! Hey, come on, what were you looking for again? That crazy old biddy's books? They're all still there. She left all of them, and everything else, months ago. She just went home one day and never came back, not paying no rent or nothing.. I'll let you in if you want."

Dipper's whole body felt like it was going to explode with joy. "Really, sir? Oh, thank you so much! I'm- uh, I've been writing a paper... on, you know, uh, silly superstitions people believe, and I saw a while ago that she had a book that I can't get at my library..."

"Mm hmm, mm hmm, very good," the guard said, nodding his head, already turned to walk toward the locked gate, fiddling with his keyring. "Someone might as well get some use out of all that garbage she had."  


Dipper let out a little huff of laughter. He couldn't believe his luck. Free books! Old, useful looking books! He would cart the whole bookshelf away and tie it to the top of Alfred if the guard let him. Well, probably not, that'd be stupid, a lot of them would end up on the side of the road if he did that, but there had to be some space for a pile or two in the footwells and under the chairs... probably. Unless Mabel had filled up that space with art crap too, ugh. Their dad had yelled for at least a half hour the first time they came back from one of her art shows about car packing safety and the importance of being able to see out all the windows, but surely just a couple of books on top of all the other stuff couldn't really hurt...

The guard got down on one knee and unlocked the bottom of the gate. The gate went up, and Dipper looked in and then groaned.

Trashed! The entire place looked like a hurricane went through it, and the bookshelf was completely empty, and he could only see maybe a handful of scattered ripped-out  pages about on the floor or on furniture. "Nooo," he moaned.

"What the-" the guard said, getting up very slowly, clutching at the side of the entryway. "What the hell happened?! That old, crazy bat. Just what she deserves. Ach, I should go let the manager know." He hobbled away, grumbling under his breath.

Dipper stared at the mess for a while, not sure if he should even try to look through the toppled and destroyed furniture and strewn trash in that little closet of a space. There wasn't even really anywhere to walk or stand anymore. He swung his leg over a chunk of wood about a foot high and when he put his foot down on the other side he heard a loud 'crunch'. He winced and peered over his shoulder, but no one else was in the alcove, and none of the other shops could see into this one. The room was dim and on top of the usual mold and fried food smell there was also a whiff of skunkiness.

He brought his other leg over, landing on the floor with another loud crunch, which he completely ignored this time. He squinted in the dark, trying to see a light switch, then gave up and pulled out his phone and used its flashlight function.

Nothing, nothing, nothing! Damn it! There were no books, no weird occult artifacts, just more and more trash and trashed things everywhere he looked. He crunched a few more steps to the back of the tiny, cramped space, where the bookcase was lying on its side, broken in half. With one finger he leaned the bottom half back, and found nothing under it, either. Finally he went to the desk, strangely the only thing left untouched, with a stack of papers neatly piled on top, unbroken, unscathed, and one drawer unopened.

Dipper reached out to pull open the drawer, and swore at a painful, electric bite he felt on his fingertips just as they touched the knob. He stuck his fingers in his mouth and stared at the desk with a scowl. Hmmm, what if he…

He pulled his fingers out of his mouth, wiped the spit off onto his pants, and pulled off his hat. With the brim in his hand he aimed the back edge of it under the knob. Then he took a deep breath and raised the edge of his hat so that it touched the knob. His muscles were tense as the hat got closer, ready to drop it immediately… but nothing! Yes!

It took a bunch of tries, as the edge of his hat kept popping off the bottom of the knob, but eventually Dipper had the drawer open and finally all the time and effort was worth it. There was a book in there! Yes!

Then he bit his lip. The book was tiny, bright yellow, with an eye staring up at him from the cover. That book definitely reminded him of the other worst part of that bygone summer. The book maybe had all the answers to that mystery. Or maybe just even touching it would release that demon again.

Behind him he heard footsteps approaching. Was he going to just leave it, or…

The book was in his hand and stuffed in his pocket in the blink of an eye. Every muscle in his body was tense, waiting, but nothing happened as he turned around to see the guard a few feet away from the entrance of the store.

“There’s nothing in here, sir,” Dipper said.

“Don’t even worry ‘bout it, I’ll get Jimmy to clean up, whenever that no-good laze-about shows up,” the guard said, shaking his head. “Come on out, I’ll lock it up again for now, manager knows, nothing doing about any of it.”

“Yes, sir.” Dipper climbed out again. Once he was out in the alcove again he stuck out his hand and bit his tongue to keep from smiling at how much the old man’s face lit up before he shook Dipper’s hand. “Thank you for letting me in, sir.”

The man shook his arm harder, then clapped him on the back before letting go and backing up a bit. “There’s a good kid, good kid, need more like you! Then the world wouldn’t be such a mess, I say!”

Dipper did smile then, just a bit, at the corner of his mouth. “Is there anything I can do to help you, sir?”

“No, no, you go on your way, like I said, I’ll get that lazy son-of-a to clean up, don’t you worry none.”

“Thank you, sir,” he said again, then left, trying to walk nonchalantly, trying not to feel like that little yellow book was burning against his thigh as he headed out to the car.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want more please be sure to let me know in the comments!


End file.
